EMS magazine
-
Of the many problems facing EMS, recruitment and retention can seem among the most intractable. Google the term paramedic shortage, and you'll get more results than you can stand to read. There are no easy answers to this situation, but there are agencies out there that have had success in finding and keeping people. What are they doing right, and what can we learn from them? Here we examine some success stories featuring solutions to personnel paucities that are worth replicating.
-
You've just finished renewing your CPR card at the firehouse, and now you're sitting in the day room with your classmates. One of them is frustrated that the guidelines keep changing. "First it's five compressions to one breath," he says. "Then it's 15 to two, and now 30 to two. ⋯ For all the changes in CPR and the new toys and drugs paramedics use now, very few patients seem to get pulses back and walk out of the hospital. You wonder if things will change with the new guidelines.
-
For professions that operate in dynarnic environments, developing and improving team performance is a significant issue. Paramedics often utilize advanced, high-risk, low-frequency clinical procedures such as endotracheal intubation, rapid sequence induction, needle chest decompression and surgical airways. ⋯ Though these groups (paramedics and EMTs/first responders) operate together on scenes, if they come from different organizations, they may rarely train together. By combining the training they receive, each of these groups can improve their cybernation, or the high degree of preparedness and skill achieved when a team performs its individual and collective tasks not only correctly, but also with the rapid and smooth automaticity that's the hallmark of high-performance teams.